The blood eagle what was its

The victim is then left to die over a period of "usually hours to days. The Vikings did build a civilization, did farm and could work metal.

Mercedes Lackey mentions the ritual in her novel Burning Water. Much of this is, of course, necessary revisionism.

Lungs are soft and actually quite small when not filled with air. Angus McLellan Talk Alfred Smyth supported the historicity of the ritual, stating that it is clearly human sacrifice to the Norse god Odin.

In the crime fiction The Tunnels by Michelle Gagnonat least two of the victims found had the blood eagle performed upon them. Well into the last century, most historians of the Vikings accepted that the blood eagle was deeply unpleasant but very real.

It was not clear if the victim was alive when this was done, and I pondered how long he might have lived.

Authenticity[ edit ] There is debate about whether the blood eagle was historically practiced, or whether it was a literary device invented by the authors who transcribed the sagas. In the crime fiction The Tunnels by Michelle Gagnonat least two of the victims found had the blood eagle performed upon them.

Furthermore, it would be almost impossible to do avoid killing someone by cutting ribs near the spine, as blood loss and arterial pressure would make the death anywhere between 10 seconds and loss of conciousness 20 minutes.

A parallel can be found in Amerindian tribes, almost all tribes were relatively war like, a man was measured by his warrior conquests, that he would dance and recount around the fire, and taking of slaves from other tribes Much of the time, moreover, the same men who were doing the farming and the metalworking were also responsible for the raping and looting—it was a matter of economic imperative that Vikings who planted crops in the poor soil of Norway, Orkney or northern Scotland in the spring went raiding in the summer before returning home at harvest-time.

Offut and Keith Taylor, writing a continuation of Robert E. They were nailed in an inverted position, so that the sternum resembled the body, the ribs the wings. If they were ever extracted in the first place, it was likely as a coup de grace, with no attempts at keeping the trachea or main bronchial tract intact.

Hutton is really an unreliable scholar when it comes to ancient paganism and should be taken with a HEAVY pinch of salt! The back of the lungs is home to major veins and arteries, and even the expert butchers that the warmonging tribes were, it would be very tedious and difficult to cut ribs at the back, they are attached by the sternum at the level of the lungs, and so you coulnt move them unless they were floating ribs.

Craig Russell has written a detective novel, Blood Eagle, set in modern-day Hamburg involving a serial killer who murders his victims in the style of the blood eagle. Stephen Baxter mentions the blood eagle in his science fiction book Conqueror several times, including a detailed description of the ritual.

Since the article mainly concerns British sources, and you are more familiar with such matters, maybe you could provide some scholarly opinions on it. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles.

They showed a wax figure of a man nailed to a cross, his chest cavity opened up, and above his head was nailed his bloodied ribs. If the procedure were performed, the condemned would die of suffocation very soon after the lungs were pulled out since breathing occurs via the diaphragm and chest muscles and would probably lose consciousness due to blood loss and shock before that.

There is a song entitled "Bloode Eagle" by the German metal band Stormwarrior. That increases the volume of the thorax and also expands the lungs so the air goes to the lungs through the mouth, nose, thacheea, etc.

The fantasy novel Northern Lights mentions creatures called the "Breathless Ones", who are essentially living-dead victims of the blood eagle. She was consequently branded with the blood eagle.

If you are a thoracic surgeon you can help clear this myth up! There were relatively violent and sadistic tribes in europe that were interested in violence, and relatively peaceful ones that focused more on nature and spirits.

Shallow-draft longships allowed them to penetrate river systems and disappear at will. Offut and Keith Taylor, writing a continuation of Robert E.

So accounts of the blood eagle are generally rather late—most are 12th- or 13th-century—and rather worryingly based on the evidence of Norse and Icelandic sagaswhich were written by poets and designed to be recited as entertainment during the long northern winters.

I thought that the organs were left in tact. It may seem to be a pretty tall order to arrive at any sort of judgement on this scholarly debate, but one of the joys of studying such an obscure period of history is that the sources are so scant that anyone can become familiar with them.

Finally, as Jarrett points out, being a well-groomed but brutal soldier is scarcely a contradiction in terms.

According to the eminent medievalist J. That these serious historians dedicated journal articles or book chapters to the subject would likewise seem sufficient to justify a page.The Blood Eagle is one of the most graphic, cruel, and slow torture methods ever described, and it's associated with the Vikings.

According to 12th- and 13th-century authors, the Blood Eagle had a long tradition in Scandinavia and was used against the most heinous enemies. There's no exact date attached to its origins, nor is there a. Mar 01, · The blood eagle is known to us through ancient Nordic legends.

When a person is to be executed in this way, they are forced to lie face down on a table while. "Blood Eagle" is the seventh episode of the second season of Vikings. It is the sixteenth episode of the series overall. It first aired on April 10, It was written by creator Michael Hirst and directed by Kari Skogland.

Ragnar and King Horik clash over how to dispense justice to Jarl Borg Written by: Michael Hirst. One does not have to search too far in the secondary sources to uncover explicit descriptions of what execution by the blood eagle entailed. At its most elaborate, sketched by Sharon Turner in the History of the Anglo-Saxons ().

I've removed the references to this being an execution method. If the blood eagle was real, it was simply a way of torturing prisoners to death.

It wasn't a judicial punishment inflicted for a crime; thus it's not an execution. Blood eagle. The blood eagle is a ritualized method of execution, detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Sagas, the victim (always a member of a royal family) was placed prone, the ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of “wings”.